Chelen City: Chapter Four, Part Two

 Notes: Intrigue! Debate! Tacos! So much to love.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Four, Part Two

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Chapter Four, Part Two

What was the right course of action for when you’d just stopped an assassin, found out said assassin had a burning need to talk a man you’d killed not so long ago, and then found out the reason behind that need was pertinent to your own life?

If you were Elanus, you took them to Taco Tuesday.

Not in the cafeteria, because there were too many people there for him to deal with right now, but he contacted Martel and asked him to make sure the cooking staff sent up a full spread, then made sure everyone in his office had the option of food and drink before continuing their conversation.

Ryu stared resentfully at the taco in his hand. “That bastard said you weren’t doing Taco Tuesdays anymore,” he muttered before taking a huge bite.

“You of all people should know that Deysan has never been worth the skin he filled,” Elanus replied, reaching for his own taco. Kieron grabbed it right before he made contact and took a bite, chewing and swallowing before handing it over.

Elanus was touched. “Aw, are you worried about me being poisoned? That sweet. But I’ve been monitoring the kitchens here since we arrived.” He tapped the back of his head. “This food was all cooked in perfect accordance with the recipes on file, each piece tested for foreign organic substances before being brought up here. It’s clean.”

“I could think of half a dozen ways to kill you with that taco,” Kieron replied calmly as he put his own together. “Only one of them involves poisoning you with it.”

“You are a fucking delight, do you know that?”

There was a tiny smile on his face. “You tell me often enough.”

“I mean it.”

Ryu looked between the two of them like they were both insane. “What kind of madman have you brought to Gania, Elanus?”

He arched an eyebrow. “What, you didn’t do your homework on him?”

“He’s a fuckbuddy! He’s a mid-skilled laborer with no Central System connections you started having sex with when you hared off on your revenge cruise and then you decided to bring him back with you once you were done, all while adopting his lost cause.”

Elanus shook his head. “So close to right, and yet so far it’s almost laughable. I’ve got to be honest, Ryu, you’re not in your best form lately.”

“You try getting through your life with a sword of Damocles hanging over your head,” he snapped. Then he ate another taco because fuck it, they were delicious, and not even he could deny that.

“What’s a sword of Damocles?” Kieron asked.

“It’s what everyone with an incurable disease in the age of Regen walks around with,” Elanus said.

“Be more specific.”

“It’s the threat of something terrible bearing down on you, particularly if you’re in a position of power but more generally that threat can be much broader.” Elanus touched his abdomen. “Remember the last time I broke a rib?”

Kieron looked away. “You know I do.”

“There was no way for me to know that a little nudge like you gave me would break a rib,” he said, pushing despite the fact that he knew revisiting this hurt Kieron. He wanted him to understand this part because it was crucial to understanding a lot of Ganian culture. Too many people here had Elfshot Disease to ignore, and with the prospect of a cure on the horizon… “But it did. And that could have killed me. One day I’m fine, the next I might rupture an artery or have a brain aneurysm. Get me into Regan and that will help fix it, yet, but I’m not sturdy the way I ought to be, and I never know what will break me next.

“That’s a sword of Damocles, and having a cure for that level of uncertainty would have propelled Deysan up to a level of prestige he hadn’t had in a long time.” He turned back to Ryu, who was on his third taco. “So, tell me more about this cure.”

“Systemic replacement.”

Elanus immediately shook his head. “That’s not legal.”

Kieron looked a little lost. “What is systemic replacement?”

“It’s making people into cyborgs.” Which wasn’t allowed, not to the extent that systemic replacement implied. “There’s a reason the Central System leaned so hard into developing Regen instead of making replacement parts for people. Cyborgs were a thing in the early days of the Federation, a long time ago now—until some evil genius decided to push a series of updates through their software that included genocide protocols.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Kieron tapped the back of his head. “Almost everyone has an implant. We could all be influenced by it.”

“Influencing a person’s mind is one thing, actively controlling parts of their physical forms is quite another. Ships that relied on too many cyborg workers were left stranded, cyborgs working in healthcare wrought untold levels of havoc…a hell of a lot of people died, many of them the cyborgs themselves. It left enough of an impression that systemic replacement has been, is, and remains illegal across every Federation planet, regardless of whether they’re Central System or not.”

Ryu sighed. “Deysan was walking a fine line with this and he knew it. His proposal was a very delicate one—organic parts, supported by inorganic compounds to improve their strength and durability, implanted into prospective patients one at a time. He’d already finished replacing my entire skeleton and my lymphatic system before he left.” Ryu smiled for a moment. “I haven’t had a broken bone in over a year.”

That was impressive. “What was he putting in before he left?”

“A new nervous system. Piece by piece, of course, not everything all at once.” Ryu touched his neck. “He’d just put in a spinal cord.”

“One supported by inorganic material,” Kieron said. “Huh. So it diminished the effectiveness of my stunner.”

“Yep.”

“And that’s bad for some reason.”

Ryu set his half-eaten taco down on his plate and leaned back into the chair, exuding fatigue. “Yep. Because the inorganic material, whatever it is, is starting to break down. I’m having seizures—way worse than I ever did before, even with the disease. Sometimes…” He flexed his right hand. “I lose feeling in a limb. It’s come back each time, but it takes longer and longer. I need to access his files, but they’re completely locked down with a code that not even you will be able to break. I need Deysan to do it, and apparently,” he glared at both of them, “he’s dead. So I guess I’m fucked.”

Kieron looked at Elanus. “Are all Ganians this dramatic?”

“You can’t say we don’t have a flare for it,” Elanus replied, hiding his growing excitement behind a joke.

Apparently, he hid it too well, because Ryu jumped to his feet. “Look, you bastard, it’s one thing to be completely unable to help me but it’s another to make fun of me for not wanting to die a slow and horrible death—”

“Rich words coming from an assassin,” Kieron shot back.

Elanus stood up and held out a placating hand. “Both of you need to relax. Please.

“Because it turns out I might have an answer for this little puzzle after all.”